My Father's Hands
by epalladino
Summary: A confrontation with Tom Manning after Trevor Broom's death triggers memories for a grieving Hellboy. Please read and review.


**Author's notes:** Just couldn't help myself. Whenever I start seeing Halloween decorations, it makes me think of the movie Hellboy and the death of Trevor Broom. And for those of you kind enough to be following my fic Hellboy's Family: yes, I am working on another update. But I just can't get this new idea out of my head.

**Disclaimers:** Characters not mine; big time movie spoilers, if you haven't seen it. If H.B. seems a bit more introspective than usual, he can be like that in the original comics; where he prefers to introspect in England.

**My Father's Hands**

"Hellboy, I want you to go back to your room," Tom Manning yelled at me, "And I want you to stay there this time. You have no reason to be here."

"You've got my father in there and I want to see him." I could have just punched his lights out and forced my way into the section of the Medical Wing that the Bureau used for a morgue; but I didn't have the energy. I seemed to have used all of that up removing the temporary cover over the huge hole that was in the wall of my room and squeezing my way through all those service shafts.

"C'mon Manning, just one more time; that's all I want and I'll get out of your hair." For some reason, as miserable as I was, I couldn't help making one more dig at old baldy-bean. It didn't help.

"Get the hell out of here," he yelled even louder, his face turning brick red. Funny, his face always got like that when we had our pleasant little chats. "Too little, too late, anyway, isn't it? You treated Trevor like dirt when he was alive, Hellboy. Why bother, now that he's dead?"

Lashing my tail, I stepped closer; anger beginning to fill the pit of emptiness that was inside me.

"I've found out there's going to be some sort of wake in his office tomorrow morning and I know you're not inviting me. Look, I don't want to disrespect his memory by causing what he would have called an 'unseemly outburst'; but I really need to see him and I'm not going away 'til you let me in."

Paling slightly, Manning backed up; but, to give him credit, he didn't back down. He just glanced at the security guards who were there with him; and I could see him coming to the realization that he wasn't going to get much help from them. They were just staring at me. I'm sure they were wondering if I was going to lose it with him, like I did the day Abe got hurt.

But my anger faded as quickly as it had come. The day that Abe got hurt was also the day my father was murdered; the same day that he looked in disgust at all of the broken glass after I nearly flattened Manning with a metal locker. At the time, I was too excited by Liz's return to the Bureau to notice much of anything else. Too bad, because it was the last time I would see my father alive.

"Aw, what's the use," I muttered, turning away from a somewhat surprised Manning. I don't think he expected me to give up quite so easily. I walked slowly back to my room; the room that now had a gaping hole in its cement wall. I used to love that room; but, little by little, it had started to seem more like a prison than anything else. Now, it seemed like a tomb, cold and empty.

In a way, Manning was right; it was too late. But I have seen the troubled spirits of murdered men and hoped that my father's spirit might still be there, hovering near his corpse. Yet, all I really wanted was just to touch his hand one more time; the hand that I had held for so many long hours when I was fourteen and thought he was dying of cancer. Hoping, without any real hope, that with this one last touch I could tell him all of the things I had never been able to tell him.

As I sat in the dark in my room, it was his hands that I remembered. Kind hands, gentle hands; hands that never once struck me in anger or pushed me away when I needed him. No, I was the one who had pushed him away.

Still, I had to see him. Climbing once again into that hole in my wall, I worked my way up the service shafts until I came out onto the entranceway roof. There, I sat and waited; knowing that sooner or later they would carry his coffin out and I could, at least, see that, even if I couldn't touch his hand.

I had been hoping to see the sun rise; but the day that arrived matched my mood—dark and rainy.

And as I stood in the rain to watch them carry the coffin out of the building, part of me hoped that it was empty. That somewhere, in a place yet unknown, my father's hands were waiting to touch me.


End file.
